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August 09, 2006
VC-Backed MergerMarket Covers Its Own Acquisition
Because we are financial journalists ourselves we appreciate it when our brethren can make a great financial success off gathering and documenting news. Today we learned that Mergermarket was bought by Pearson for £101M.
Mergermarket's co-founder Charlie Welsh, 40, was senior M&A correspondent at Financial News and he also worked at Newsweek. Apparently Welsh saw that banks in London and New York would pay a premium for early news on global M&A, so he launched MergerMarket to do just that. Welsh will take will take about £10M from the proceeds. The rest goes to other employees including the CEO and venture investor New Media Spark is cashing in its £28M stake. Its initial investment was £1.175M.
Ironically, given Mergermarket's focus, the company's announcement of its acquisition by Pearson was mysteriously bungled. They put out a press release, retracted it and then re-issued it just two hours later.
Updates: VCRatings, one of several blogs written by journalists who work for The Deal who are able tap into its meaty databases of transactions and articles, has some good insights into the deal - such as the note that the VCs will reap $50M each of the purchase price. It also gives the return multiples and a quote circa 2000 from Mergermarkets' earliest VC, NewMedia Spark. (Disclosure: alarm:clock euro's team leader was a venture reporter for TheDeal.com for two years starting in late 2003).
Read _ VC Ratings: VC Exit Rating: Mergermarket (vcratings blog)
Posted on August 9, 2006 09:36 PM | Posted to Media | Permalink
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